Posts Tagged ‘nutmeg’

Just read a really nice essay by the fiction writer Ben Marcus about great writing — it was about short story writing, but I think it applies to great non-fiction writing, too. The best, he writes, has a “time-release feature . . . to crack open in the body days later, bleeding out inside us until we start to glow.”

It’s not that I want to HURT people with my descriptions of how it feels to be a grandmother. But I do want to affect them, and I’m not quite getting there in these little snippets.

Sometimes when I hold Peaches and gaze at her mobile, mercurial, perfect little face, when I sit on the back porch with her asleep on my shoulder and listen to her creaks and whistles, I feel a here-and-now peacefulness I don’t get much of these days. But too often I’m also thinking about whether I’m being too intrusive as a grandma, whether Peaches’s parents are enjoying themselves here in my house, whether anyone appreciates the food I’m cooking. I’m cooking so much food, so many times.

Too often, too, I’m finding myself a little wistful about Nutmeg’s happiness — not jealousy, exactly, but a kind of yearning to be right there with her and Southpaw amidst their murmured conversations, myself a young woman again but this time with a husband who is one hundred percent on board with anything I do. Not jealousy, exactly, but something unbecoming and inappropriate anyway. And, let’s face it, something that probably actually IS jut a little bit jealousy.

Despite my angst of a couple of days ago about whether Nutmeg was irritated with me despite my best efforts at laying low — an irritation that iDaddy insists was all in my mind — I have to admit that it’s been a really wonderful interlude, all of us together here at the beach. Nutmeg and Southpaw are easing into new parenting like a warm bath — it’s not a show, not hiding their real feelings just to make us feel better; it’s the real thing. Southpaw told Nutmeg that he hasn’t felt this relaxed and happy since their honeymoon (which wasn’t that long ago — Nutmeg was six months pregnant at the time), and it’s probably for the same reason — there’s nothing much to do except focus on each other and now, also, this glorious baby. He in particular is incredibly smitten with Peaches — it seems he could spend hours just holding her and looking at her, if the world would let him. Supposedly he’s back from paternity leave now, working from our dining room table at the beach — but often when I pass by I see that his laptop is sitting unattended, and Southpaw is upstairs again while Peaches nurses, hanging around with his little family, changing a diaper, engaging in some quality “tummy time” time.

And Nutmeg is happy, too, for much the same reason — her maternity leave lasts longer, till early September, and between now and then there’s nothing much to do but focus on the baby. When I see her at her laptop, she’s not checking in at work, she’s uploading Peaches photos or looking on Amazon for a stroller or a little tent for the beach. When I catch her reading it’s nothing more serious than a novel (though the one she chose from my bookshelf,The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante, is pretty damn dark).

iDaddy and I are not quite so relaxed, largely because we’re both actually trying to get some work done during this interlude. (Well, Southpaw is, too, but the draw of Peaches is even stronger for him.) And also because we think that our role here partly is a practical one, so we’re thinking about and preparing nightly dinners for 4 more intensely than we otherwise would. But a baby really does bring a sense of balance back into the picture. And occasionally she’s hilarious, all those creaks and grimaces and flailings and yawns that a beautiful baby cycles through. Occasionally, as in this photo of Nutmeg trying her hand at nursing in public for the first time, her parents are kind of hilarious, too.

Gee, and here I thought we’d all been getting along so well. Nutmeg is finally at the beach with iDaddy and me, having arrived with Southpaw and the delicious Peaches two days ago ,and settling in to the two extra bedrooms we have in the front of the house. (This is exactly why we were happy to have been able to buy this house 5 years ago — for long visits from the grandbabies, who at the time were mere figments of my fevered imagination.) It felt like we had already settled into a nice routine, with iDaddy and me leaving them alone for hours on end so they could do whatever child care things they needed to do, waiting for a full hour without complaint so they could prepare for our first foray to the beach yesterday evening, making elaborate (for us) dinners and letting them head straight to bed afterward without cleaning up (even though they offer — they are sweet kids, after all), serving as eager pairs of arms to hold Peaches as she sleeps. We saw that Nutmeg and Southpaw don’t seem to ever put her down into the bassinet during the day but just walk around with her, or sit with her asleep on their chest, so when Peaches fell asleep on my chest yesterday I just sat with her and relaxed into it, for hours, even though I had work to do and even though I had to pee. Later I checked with Nutmeg and Southpaw to be sure that their hesitation to put her down isn’t out of some sort of baby-rearing philosophy, it was simply because they lovedholding her so much — so now I know that in the future if I really feel a need to put her down I can at least do so without feeling like an interfering grandma.

But today, I was made to feel as though I’m being EXPERIENCED as an interfering grandma after all. At lunch time, as they rummaged through the refrigerator, I announced which leftovers I had already pulled out for them to use to make their lunches. I wasn’t fussing around actually MAKING anything for them; I was eating my own leftover tabbouleh at the time. But Nutmeg chose that moment to tell me, supposedly good-humoredly, that I had a window of one more day, after which I was expected to know that they would have as clear a sense of the refrigerator’s inventory as I did.

As I said, it was said in supposed good humor. And I replied in a sort of good-humored way. But what the fuck? Nutmeg is not usually critical of my behavior — unless it’s something that has bugged her a whole lot more than she lets on in her supposedly good-humored comment. And here I’ve been SO restrained, SO careful about not inserting myself into their routine, SO careful not to grab Peaches from them when I feel like holding her. In fact, I’ve been so restrained that a part of me started to fret last night that maybe they worry that I’m not being grandmotherly ENOUGH.

And what I get instead is a snarky comment about my working too hard to make their lives easier by telling them what food I’ve pulled out of the fridge.

Obviously I should just let this one go, right? And be grateful that they’re here and basically glad to be, and that I get to spend a couple of hours a day cuddling an infant who’s quite wonderful to hold. What I should focus on, instead of the “stop telling us where the food is” comment, is Nutmeg’s comment from earlier today, when she marveled at my comfort holding Peaches at the breakfast table on the back porch. “All I could see from inside was you holding the newspaper,” she said. “And you looked so relaxed I was surprised to see you were actually holding a baby, too.”

Ur-Momma would probably be horrified if she realized how often I go to school on the mistakes she made 35 years ago. I keep remembering things she did that managed to upset me when I was a new mother, and I actively try not to do those things to Nutmeg.

I’m not even sure HOW she managed to upset me so much, and so often. Back when Meta was a newborn, Ur-Momma and I lived 250 miles apart, and we only spoke by phone on Sundays. That’s a far cry from the constant connection that’s possible with Nutmeg. We live just a subway ride away from each other (okay, it’s an hour-long subway ride, but once you’re on the train it hardly matters). And whenever I’m curious about how Peaches is doing I could, theoretically, just send Nutmeg a text or an email and ask for an update.

But I resist. Partly because Nutmeg is herself so good at texting a couple of photos a day of how the baby’s doing, which helps me get my fix. (How is it, I wonder, that a one-week old infant manages to look so child-like in some of those photos? “It’s all about the open eyes,” texts Nutmeg in reply.) Partly because I don’t want to do what Ur-Momma always did — go straight to asking questions about the most worrisome things, the very things that are probably of some concern to Nutmeg and Southpaw already and that they really don’t need to hear about from me.

It’s not exactly the lesson you want to pass along to your daughter, is it? The lesson always to do the opposite of everything you once did? I hope for a better legacy for myself, to be honest. But maybe one way to get that better legacy is to take the Ur-Momma lesson to heart, and to rein myself in whenever I want, more than anything, to just have a good long chat with one of my kids.

And she’s beautiful, with regular features and big soft cheeks and some black curly hair and one of those perfect bows of a baby mouth. And she seems to be even-tempered, too. iDaddy and I drove Nutmeg, Southpaw, and the baby, whom I’m going to give the blog name Peaches, home from the hospital today, and she whimpered a bit and then actually seemed to be able to settle herself, without us needing to pull over on the Brooklyn Bridge and let Nutmeg nurse.

The new parents are both pretty even-tempered themselves, actually. They were that way even throughout the labor, for which I was in attendance. We all got to the hospital at about 7 pm Tuesday night, and Peaches was born at 7:47 on Wednesday morning. The whole 12-hour labor was all kind of quiet and focused — especially after Nutmeg asked for an epidural about an hour in. She had been in labor at home for most of the day and she was tired of it. Post-epidural, the spirit in the room noticeably lightened, and everyone was pretty chirpy throughout. Even during the two hours of pushing, which was hard for her.

It was also great to watch Southpaw through it all. He was completely attuned to Nutmeg and gave her whatever she needed, even if it was just offering a sip of water, or just knowing enough to be silent. And he grimaced whenever she pushed — it was as if he was pushing, too.

Now I’m just trying to figure out how not to get on their nerves! This is just my own personal hangup — NOTHING they’ve said so far, even in extremis during the labor, has made me think that they’re anything but glad to have me around. I intend to do my damnedest to keep it that way.

Memorial Day was a study in contrasts for iDaddy and me. We spent the morning at the new Whitney Museum, opened recently in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan right at the southernmost end of the High Line. (Contrary to my expectations, based only on the way the building looked as it was being built, I loved the museum and thought that all the choices they had made, in terms of both architecture and curation of the current exhibit, were just right.) Then we spent the afternoon with Ur-Momma, hanging around with her in her senior-housing studio apartment, having pretty much the same conversation four or five times during the two hours we were there, in predictable rotation.

The conversation veered off into slightly new territory when Ur-Momma started talking about the thing that really bugs her about being 90 years old — that she’s not necessary to anybody anymore.”I don’t have any value,” Ur-Momma said. “Then maybe you should change the definition of ‘value,'” said I. It just comes with the territory, added iDaddy in his kind and gentle way. “We’re a lot younger than you, and we’re not necessary to anybody anymore, either.”

And it’s true, we’re not: our two daughters are fully adults and can get along fine without us, hardly ever check in with us, don’t really give us details about what’s going on in their lives (well, Meta doesn’t, at least). But maybe that’s one thing that a new grandchild will do for us: give iDaddy and me the feeling that we’re kind of necessary again. That’s what drove our actions the day before Memorial Day, anyway, when we spent at least half of it trying to figure out how to get the baby car seat into the back seat of our Toyota. iDaddy’s job — after I’ve done my own assigned job and aided as much as I can during labor and delivery — will be to drive Nutmeg, Southpaw, and the baby home from the hospital. Necessary indeed.

How well I remember Six Practical Lessons for an Easier Childbirth, a book mentioned today in the front-page New York Timesobituary of its author, Elisabeth Bing. Not that I remember what the six practical lessons were, exactly; just that it was one of my favorite books among all the childbirth advice tomes I found myself devouring back in early 1980, when I was pregnant with Meta. Bing’s book gave me comfort, made me think it might actually be possible to push out that baby without hurting her, without hurting myself, and without begging for drugs. All of which is the way it happened.

I was surprised to read in the obit, by Times reporter Karen Barrow, that Bing’s own childbirth didn’t go as easily as she led me to believe mine would go.

But thanks to Bing, who was 100 years old when she died last week, women don’t get “the works” anymore if they don’t want to (and certainly not simply because they’re asking too many annoying questions). Thanks to Bing, Nutmeg is having a baby in a setting in which she’s asked, in advance, what her atittude is toward medication, toward walking around during labor, toward being monitored, toward being cut — all the decisions that, in my day, we women in labor had to just hope would be left to us, not to our doctors. I’m curious to see how the advance planning actually plays out in the delivery room, but I have to believe that asking them will make a difference — and that the existence of Six Practical Lessons, still in print 48 years after it was first published, helped create a culture in which those questions are asked of expectant mothers in the first place.